that one random bookworm

“They're sending him to a hospital, then back home, and it's funny because I know he's lying on a cot somewhere with a roof over his head and some nurses checking his bandages or whatever, waiting to get well enough for the ship back to America, but to me it's like he's dead because--home? Thinking of home? It's like thinking of heaven. Someplace you hope you'll end up one day, but good luck, buddy, because you're a soldier, not a saint.”
― Traci Chee, We Are Not Free

“It isn't raining anymore. The rain has become soft and light and cold.
It's snowing.
Snowing.
I'm thinking of Topaz and the first snow I ever saw, flakes tumbling lazily out of the sky and settling on the barracks and the dusty roads, so quiet.
And the guys throwing snowballs.The numbness in your fingers, that wet slap in your side, Shig and Tommy and Minnow and Stan Katsumoto...
Everyone running and shrieking with laughter. Mas, Frankie, Bette, Yum-Yum...
Keiko laughing. Prettiest girl I ever saw, with snow like stars in her hair.
I close my eyes, and I think I can hear us, all of us, running. The Topaz roads are turning into pavement, the barracks are turning into San Francisco, the desert air is turning wet and salty, and we're running, running until we hit the ocean, that roaring blue expanse, and all of us, running into waves.
Laughing.”
― Traci Chee, We Are Not Free

“We say nothing. We don't want to believe it either.
We hold our breath, waiting for her to understand. Waiting for the news to strike like a lightning bolt. We watch laughter drain from her face. It leaves her eyes first, leaves them startled and black as moonless nights. Then her cheeks, which go pale, and her lips, which go slack.
We're not joking. We wish we were.”
― Traci Chee, We Are Not Free

“Banzai.
The word rushes over me like a river. A memory of what we used to say on the streets of Japantown when we played at war. A memory we inherited from our fathers and their fathers, this word, this history, this giving of ourselves for the nation, for the emperor.
Except now it's not for the emperor.
I don't think, in this moment, that it's even for our nation.
It's for us, our brothers, here, who have died on this hill and in dozens of battles before, for our families back home,in that dream-world of deserts and barbed wire, for our folks who had everything taken from them and still were asked for more: compliance, obedience, money, blood.”
― Traci Chee, We Are Not Free